The Hook & Plow, a new hot spot on Pier Avenue, sits several blocks up the hill from the barely contained chaos of lower Pier. It is so affable, I was happy to have no distractions — other than the dishes on my table and a really good glass of wine.

Like many of the “places of the moment,” they do a bit of mixology at The Hook & Plow. Since they don’t have a full liquor license, they use wine-based vodka and it isn’t bad — especially in the Ballast Point Bloody Mary, which mixes wine vodka with Ballast Point Calico Amber and cucumber (a Bloody Mary that’s only a Bloody Mary north-by-northwest, as it were). The wine vodka is also used in the California Mule, a variant on a Moscow Mule, made with ginger beer, lime and candied ginger. If it’s a mixed drink you need (and I have in-laws who will not go to a restaurant unless it offers mixed drinks), these sort of will do.

But I’m a touch of a purist. I’m not doctrinaire, I just like what I consume to be, well, what I want it to be.

There’s a fine collection of craft beers here, about 20 of them, and it’s hard to pass on a Belgian golden ale called Mischief (from The Bruery in Orange County). But even though it’s smaller than the beer list, the wine selection includes some favorites. Like the tasty Qupe chardonnay and the delicious Opolo albarino from Paso Robles. This is a crisp, dry white, a bit fruitier than my beloved viognier, but still properly flinty. It’s a heck of a good wine — a Spanish grape from Galicia that’s found a happy home here in SoCal. And at $11 for a glass, I didn’t feel mugged.

Indeed, I didn’t feel mugged by the menu in general. This is a fairly reasonably priced restaurant. Like Fishing with Dynamite in Manhattan Beach, it’s a casual place to go for seafood — a lively fish-intensive gastropub, with distressed wooden beams, a sheltered outdoor patio in the front and a communal table in the middle. It’s an easy place to be, with a staff that’s amazingly relaxed considering how new The Hook & Plow (“Farm to Table, Ocean to Plate”) is.

The menu isn’t the same old same old here, though the gastropub family ties are clear. There’s a Big Burger (there always is), with crispy onion, applewood smoked bacon, tomato jam and Gorgonzola topping a fine hunk of juicy beef on a tasty, puffy brioche bun. It’s delicious and at $11, a great deal. But then, so is the pulled pork sandwich, served on the same good bun, with the meat braised in craft beer for 30 hours (that’s why the sandwich is called the “30H”), served with crunchy napa cabbage slaw and a mango chutney. I wasn’t going to finish the bun — trying to be low carb and all that — but it was so good I did. No regrets. And it cost just $9.

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There’s a turkey and cranberry sandwich (sort of Thanksgiving on 14-grain toast), a beef dip with havarti cheese, a club sandwich made with Mary’s organic chicken and a fish of the day sandwich, too.

You want more seafood, go for the house-cured salmon bites, the tasty ahi poke, the oysters on the half shell, the seafood brats (fish sausage is a little strange, but not unknown), the smoked mahi mahi dip, the seafood chowder, the sesame crusted ahi and the steamer bucket for two. This bucket of all things tasty from the sea includes Dungeness crab, Pacific mussels and shrimp plus andouille sausage.

On the side, get the french fries sprinkled with Japanese seaweed and dried fish powder — and maybe another glass of wine.